How can I lock dock in Catalina?

[Bernado]

I supervise a room full of Macs in a College and have been thrown somewhat by Parental Controls now being replaced by Screen Time settings, there appears to be things I can no longer do to lock the Macs down but I need to investigate Screen Time further before I get on my high horse about it.

One thing though I can find no workaround for in Screen Time is how to lock the dock and prevent it being modified, this was a setting in Parental Controls and was vital for keeping the machines uniform.

I feel sure this setting must be present somewhere as to remove it doesn't make sense, can someone help?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

A few questions for you:
-How many Macs?
-Which models?
-Are they all now on Catalina?
-Do students/staff login with their school accounts, or did you setup local accounts on each Mac for all to use?

To properly manage Macs in an education or business environment, you should use some form of MDM (mobile device management) system like Jamf. It makes the management of Macs in multiple buildings, labs, and individual staff assignments much easier, as well as management of iOS devices. Parental Controls/Screen Time only allows for a small amount of management, and is geared more towards families and home use.

C

 

[Bernado]

Thanks for your reply.

The Macs are a bit of an anomaly in a college of networked PCs.

These machines all operate as stand-alone computers with the students logging on with a single local login, they are not networked.

The Parental Controls worked perfectly well in locking the machines down to our needs, though I'm sure there are more robust ways of doing this in a networked environment as you say.

There is little chance of incorporating these machines to the College network in the immediate future hence my need to look for a replacement local solution.

I'm glad I only updated a spare test machine, I'll hold back updating the others for now I think.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks for the additional information.

I would hold off as well, since you can control them currently. You actually may intorduce other issues by moving them to Catalina.

Let us know if you have additional questions.

C